


By Water

by theleaveswant



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mermaid, Barebacking, Beach Sex, Choose Your Own Ending, Creepy, Dubious Consent, F/M, Female Ejaculation, Folklore, Lawbender, News Media, Other, Plot Twist, Revenge, Rough Sex, Swimming, Washington, Xenophilia, doesn't science, you saucy nuisance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/theleaveswant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, on the path back up to his house in the woods, Michael began to wonder if he had not imagined the shine of scales and flicker of fins as the water closed over her agile body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time he saw her, Michael thought she was a seal.

It happened in early spring, on one of his daily runs, following a rough-cut path through the woods from the house he was renting for a vacation between roles, trying to unwind and clear his head before jumping back onto the production merry-go-round. The path climbed and dipped, crossed bridges of mossy, decaying planks over dribbling brooks, and let out near the ocean on a sliver of pebble beach. Here Michael faced a daily choice: he could run lengths up and down the beach until he got bored then retrace his steps along the path, or he could pick a direction, left or right, and go exploring—jog until he found a previously unexplored trail back up into the woods and take his chances, hoping to emerge on the quiet road not too far from his driveway. On that particular morning he went left, following the curve of the beach to the point of the crescent, where a long slab of crumbling concrete, the carcass of a disused sea wall, thrust several yards into the water from the beach. 

The wall, when Michael reached it, was too inviting to resist, its pockmarked surface riddled with hand-holds just begging him to climb. He paused at the top, taking a moment to catch his breath, before carefully picking his way along the crest, watching the water on either side of him grow darker as the beach fell away beneath the surface. His gaze slid toward the horizon and he stopped, eyes caught by the something moving against the swells, far out in the sparkling water. Michael raised a hand to shade his face against the bright sun, and squinted. Alive, definitely, whatever it was. Not a bird, moving like that, nor a whale. He frowned, trying to remember what kinds of pinniped living in this area might have fur that golden brown—or perhaps it was a sea otter? Then the shape rolled over, and Michael gaped. 

Not a sea creature at all, but a person—a girl, he thought, although at this distance it was hard to be sure. As if sensing the weight of Michael's attention the swimmer paused, body tilting to tread water, head raised to look right back at him. The swimmer raised one hand above the surface, fingers spread, and Michael, after a pause, waved back. The swimmer's arm turned gracefully at the elbow and her fingers—Michael was sure it was a woman, now—curled, her slim wrist undulating as she beckoned him to join her. Michael blinked slowly, then shook his head. The swimmer froze, shrugged, and turned to resume her passage, gliding smoothly away from him across the bay.

*

He saw her again on the next morning that he followed that route, two days later; an early telephone conference with the director of his next project on the interceding day had kept him from running at his usual time, although he'd made up for it in the early evening.

He scaled the concrete easily and strode along the top of the wall, his eyes scanning the waves near the middle of the bay. 

"Hi."

Startled by the chirping voice rising up from below him, Michael tripped and nearly lost his footing. "Jesus," he said, looking over the edge of the concrete. She was right there, the girl from the other morning, clinging to the edge of the wall at the waterline and blinking up at him with strands of wet hair stuck to her face. "Hello."

"I'm sorry, did I scare you?" she asked. 

"Not at all," he said, "I just didn't expect . . ." She pushed away from the wall, cutting backwards out into the ocean, and Michael saw that she was naked. Topless, anyway; the water was murky and the lighting such that he couldn't make out much of her body below the surface, but there were no straps on her shoulders and as she floated away from him she bobbed a bit, her body rising to expose bare, buoyant breasts tipped with tight, dark nipples. Michael swallowed and locked his gaze on her face as the water swelled and rippled around her. He shrugged apologetically, having forgotten how he'd intended to finish his sentence. 

"I saw you up here the other day, right? That was you?" Her arms swept water away from herself and towards as she kept herself upright and afloat, turning with a hypnotic grace.

"Yes, it was." Michael frowned. "Aren't you cold down there?"

"Nah," the girl said, grinning. "I'm used to it. It's kind of nice today, actually—come in and see for yourself."

Michael laughed. "No, thank you. I'm afraid it's a bit early in the season for me."

"Suit yourself," she said, flashing him another bright smile, and turned away, her body jackknifing as she dove, deep under the water, so fast and sudden that Michael could scarcely say she'd moved at all, but simply vanished with a soft splash and a cloud of foaming bubbles. He watched for a long while after she'd gone, until long after the initial churn had settled and the froth dissipated, but as hard and as far out across the water as he looked, he did not see her surface again, nor could he spy any signs of distress.

Later, on the path back up to his house in the woods, as he replayed her disappearance in his mind, Michael began to wonder if he had not imagined the shine of scales and flicker of fins as the water closed over her agile body.

*

Michael stayed away from the beach for a few days after that, changing his routine and exploring the cuts and game trails on the inland side of the highway, but by the end of the week he was back at the sea wall. This time she was there waiting for him, stretched out on her belly on top of the concrete. She smiled when she saw him, pushing up on her elbows and kicking her feet in the air above the swell of her round, bare arse.

"Hello again," she said, shaking her still-damp hair out of her face with one hand.

"Didn't sell your voice for those, then," Michael muttered, his gaze tracing the line of her legs from hipbone to small, pink toes.

The girl frowned. "What was that?"

"Nothing," he said, looking back at her face. "Just surprised to see you out of the water." He waited, searching her blue-grey eyes for some sign of apprehension, but saw only mild confusion and amusement. "I'm Michael," he said, stepping over seaweed and dead crabs to stand beside the wall by her head, at the edge of the water, the surf scant inches away from lapping at the soles of his trail shoes, and raised his right hand overhead for her to shake. Down at the low tide line the wall rose to a height nearly level with the top of Michael's head, forcing him to crane his neck back to look up at her. She smiled and squirmed closer to the edge of the wall, shifting her weight onto her left arm and freeing the right to grasp his hand. Her grip was strong and icy cold, and her skin looked and felt just as smooth this close up as it had appeared from farther away.

"Pleasure to meet you, Michael. I'm Jen."

"Pleasure," he repeated, looking up at her, and belatedly released her clammy hand. She had a round, pretty face, almost a doll's face, with prominent cheekbones, soft eyes, and pink, pouting lips that rather spoiled the demure effect by quirking into a saucily enigmatic smile. "Where do you come from, Jen?"

Jen shrugged and tipped her head on her shoulder toward the far side of the bay—or toward the middle of the bay itself? She peered down at him from her rocky perch, her wide eyes narrowed curiously between curling tendrils of wet-dark hair drying golden blonde in the warm spring sun. "Can I ask you a question?"

Michael smiled. "Shoot."

"Do you go running every day?" 

"If I can."

"Why?"

He looked out at the ocean, blue-grey and broken with choppy white waves, and as he did so imagined her eyes skimming over him, sizing up his body underneath his track suit, her voice in his head whispering, 'there's hardly any meat on your bones to begin with.'

"Well, I'm an actor," he said, half-expecting her eyes to widen in recognition, the little 'I thought you looked familiar' gasp that people so often gave him these days, but carried on when that didn't happen. "I do it to stay fit, to keep my body ready for whatever the next job demands of me. And I do it because it makes me feel good."

Jen grinned. "You should come swimming with me, then. I'll give you a workout that'll make you feel _great_."

Michael laughed and spread his hands apologetically. "I'm afraid I haven't brought my swimming trunks."

She giggled. "Do I look like I care?"

Michael hummed. "Maybe once the weather warms up a bit."

"Do you not know how to swim?" She frowned, cocking her head to one side. 

"No, I do," Michael said. "I just don't like being cold." He fished his phone out of his pocket and checked the time. "I've got to get back to the house, I have an appointment I have to prepare for. I expect I'll see you again, though?"

"Seems likely," she said, and rolled over on her back with her knees bent, resting hands on her ribs just below her breasts.

When Michael looked back from the foot of the path, he saw her perched on the edge of the wall like Humpty Dumpty, watching his retreat. As he turned back around to start his ascent, his eyes caught on a piece of weathered graffiti: 'Nick + Jen 4ever', carved into the body of a dry driftwood log.

*

That night the temperature dropped sharply; Michael woke up to frost on the panes of his bedroom window. He ran anyway, bundling himself up in layers against the cold: thermal long underwear, a toque, and woollen mittens in addition to his usual t-shirt, sweatpants, and hooded sweatshirt. When he stepped outside to lace his shoes his breath fogged, and he blew on his fingers to warm them before pulling on his mittens and setting off down the trail.

"My god," he said when he saw Jen, still naked, huddled in the shadow of the concrete wall with her arms wrapped around her torso. "You must be freezing! What are you doing out here on a day like this? Here, take this." He started to unzip his hoodie with the intention of handing it to her or even draping it over her shoulders, but she waved him off.

"No, it's fine. I'm fine." 

"You're not fine, your teeth are chattering!" Michael frowned, looking out at the rough ocean mirroring the slate-grey sky, and felt a speckling of cold moisture—sea spray, or a dusting of snow?—sting his skin as it landed on his face. "Look, come on up to the house and have a—a brandy, or some hot chocolate or something. A hot bath."

"I can't," she said, shying away from his attempt to draw her in toward him, to warm her with his body. "You know, I think today the water is warmer than the air? Maybe you want to come in with me and warm up . . ." 

"No," Michael said, shaking his head and frowning as Jen backed away from him, slowly, across slippery stones, towards the edge of the water. He turned away before she reached it, trudging hastily over the unstable substrate, back to the shelter of the woods.

The following morning was even colder. Michael did not run. After that it warmed up again, but Michael had company: James had taken a few days off from his current project to visit, flying up the coast from California for a weekend mini-break. Instead of running, they took long hikes along marked inland trails. When they visited the beach on Saturday, it was in the afternoon; Jen wasn't there, and Michael did not mention her to James, just as he had not mentioned her to anyone else.

*

"I know what you are," Michael told Jen when he finally returned to the beach, one sunny morning a few days after James left.

"Oh?" she said, dancing out of his reach as she jogged alongside him on the beach, her bare feet stepping lightly over broken shells and smooth-worn pebbles. "And what am I?"

Michael followed after her, throwing out a hand to catch her wrist. She gasped and staggered back but Michael yanked sharply, pulling her towards him. He caught her with an arm around her ribs, pinning her other arm to her side as he held her captured hand up to his face to look at it—the faint translucency of her skin, the almost-clawlike shape of her fingernails, and the spans of extra tissue stretching between her fingers, making her hands look almost webbed. He lowered her hand, passing his grip on her wrist to the arm locked tight around her body, and ran his fingers down her throat, tracing the subtle shadows there until he caught the lip of one with the edge of his thumb. He began to lift the flap of skin but Jen hissed and writhed against him, twisting her neck away from his fingers and tucking her chin into her collarbone, her gill-slits clenched tight. She glared up at him, panting, her full lips parted in a snarl that bared teeth just a little too sharp, too undifferentiated to be human.

"I'm sorry," Michael said, and released her. She stumbled away from him, still glaring, and rubbed at the wrist he'd grabbed. "I had to know for certain."

"Fuck you," she spat. "You could have asked."

"Could I?" he asked, and she scoffed and turned away. "Jen, I am sorry."

"Just leave me alone," she said, setting off across the beach towards the sea wall. "Go back to your house and your appointments and your bath. Tell everyone you know about the mermaid, the freak you met on the beach. Tell them to bring their cameras, and to settle in for a long wait. You'll never see me again, and neither will they."

"Jen!" Michael ran after her, easily catching her up and clapping a hand on her shoulder. She stopped and spun to face him, staring up at him with eyes brimming with too-human tears. "What's the matter?"

"You're not . . . scared?" she asked, and sniffled. "Disgusted?"

"No!" he said. "No, god, of course not." He put his left hand on her upper arm, feeling her skin cool and rubbery, and tilted her chin up with the first two fingers of his right. "I could never be disgusted by you, not ever. You're beautiful."

She blinked up at him, smiling slowly. "Really?"

"Absolutely."

Her smile widened and she licked her lips; Michael thought he caught a flash of predatory triumph flicker across her face but dismissed that thought as paranoia as she lifted her hands to card her fingers through his hair and rose up on her tiptoes to kiss him.

In a way, he'd been right the first time: she was a sea creature, though not the kind described in his guide to local fauna. He could taste the sea in her mouth and on her skin as he kissed her back, roughly, his hands roaming over her back, waist, and arse. She smelled of salt and seaweed, and she moved with the grace and force of the tide, pulling him down until his knees buckled and he folded to the ground.

Michael lowered himself onto his back on the cold, lumpy ground, and Jen followed him down, straddling his hips. She reached between them for the zip on his hoodie, drawing it down and spreading it open, then pushed his worn t-shirt up his chest to his armpits and clawed at his flesh with her fingernails. Michael groaned and arched up into her touch, tearing his hands away from their exploration of her body just long enough to shake them free of his sleeves so that he could wrap her up in his bare arms, skin against skin. He lifted Jen up and turned her over, setting her down on the blanket of his sweatshirt. He rocked briefly up onto his heels to peel off his t-shirt and throw it away, then caught her hands and stretched out her arms, pinning them down on top of the out-flung sleeves, holding her down.

He traced her body with his tongue: cheeks, chin, throat, her pulse beating hard behind the tight-sealed gill-slits, collarbone, breasts, ribs, belly as far as he could reach, licking up the salt from her skin. He moved farther down her body, releasing her wrists to clutch at her hips, her arse, lifting her pelvis off the ground and raising her cunt towards his face like an oyster shell so that he could drink her liquor, gasping at the wet, raw taste of her, and lap his tongue against her pearl. She moaned and writhed in his grip, her hands scuffing noisily against the stones as they moved to rake through her snarled hair and paw roughly at her breasts. She hooked her legs tighter over his shoulders, driving his face further into her and crushing her thighs against his ears so that he could hear the pounding of both their hearts, like the pounding of the surf, roaring inside his head. He pressed a finger to her entrance, probing for resistance, and, finding none, drove it inside. He moved that finger around, feeling out the shape and depth of her channel, before adding another and curling them both towards her pubic bone, wondering how closely her reaction would resemble a human woman's.

Jen bucked her hips, her torso rolling like a wave as she fucked herself against Michael's mouth and hand, her fingers scratching red marks into her pale flesh, until she finally reached out for his face, slapping it away from her clit but still driving herself down onto his fingers and pressing the heel of her hand into her belly above her pubic bone and screaming as she came, a geyser of hot, briny liquid shooting out around his knuckles to spill down his arm and drip from his chin. Michael gasped, his tongue darting out to lick up the juice from his face and palm, while Jen lowered her quaking body to the ground on top of Michael's rumpled sweater. 

When his hand was clean Michael growled, raising his hips so that he could shove his sweatpants down out of the way, kicking off his shoes so that he could shake one leg clear, then lay his body over top of Jen's like a blanket, sliding his swollen cock between her thighs, against her lips, and coating it with the slick moisture collected there. He drew back and readied to sink into her, but Jen shook her head, grabbing hold of his upper arms, and forced him over onto his back on the bare stones. 

She rose up onto her hands and knees and threw one magnificent thigh over his body, straddling him again, before she spat in her palm and rubbed her hands together. She pulled both hands, one after the other, over the whole length of his dick from base to tip, twisting and squeezing with every stroke. The feel and sight of her tiny, webbed fingers wrapped around the shaft of his cock was almost enough to get Michael off even before Jen shifted her hips, laying his cock down against his belly and grinding her cunt against the head of it. Michael threw his head back, digging another divot into the rocky beach, as that wicked, taunting, almost-penetrating and so-wet wriggle drove him to the edge of control before Jen finally, finally, lifted off him far enough to line up his leaking dick with her entrance, and sank back to envelop him.

She rode him hard and fast, slamming down against his hips with the fury of a hurricane, her hands on his shoulders holding him down and marking him with bruises and scratches from her sharp claws while Michael fought desperately to make it last, to hold on as long as he could, until with an unearthly howl she came again, her muscles spasming around his cock and milking him dry. 

She pulled away from him almost immediately after she'd finished, frowning at the state of her skin, her thighs streaked with both of their come. "I'm going to go rinse off," she said, her voice rough, and rolled up onto her feet, picking her way carefully over the pebbles and driftwood to the water's edge.

Michael, with a sigh and a regretful glance at the grey sky and the trees lining the shore, stood up as well, and followed her, weak-kneed, into the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Choose your own adventure! If you want to believe that this story has a "happy" ending (for Michael), stop here. If not, please continue to the next chapter.


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Optional ending

Actor Fassbender Drowned in Washington

_Hollywood star Michael Fassbender has been confirmed dead by Washington State Patrol_

A body discovered last week on a beach west of Port Angeles, WA, has been identified using DNA testing as that of Irish actor Michael Fassbender, according to a report from the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory Division. The 35-year-old star of recent films such as _Shame_ , _X-men: First Class_ , and the upcoming _Prometheus_ was reported missing last month by his manager after he failed to respond to any attempted communication for several consecutive days. Although an autopsy was performed, the results of which have not been officially released, the statement offered this morning by the Crime Laboratory Division indicates that Fassbender drowned, and that his death was most likely accidental . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains character death!


End file.
